


...Will Never Hurt Me

by kuonji



Series: Hurt [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 09:49:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7930093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuonji/pseuds/kuonji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dr. Heightmeyer says that Rodney has reached a point now where it would be good for him to go off-world once he asks for it.  He hasn't yet, though.  He stares in uncanny silence at the event horizon, like a moth at flame who knows that fire burns.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	...Will Never Hurt Me

"Codes--! Have to change..." had been the first coherent thing he'd said when they got him back. Pale, sweaty, his round face at odds with his too-thin body, he had been pressed back by his own blind fear against the pillows of the infirmary bed.

"Hush, now," Carson had said, caressing a blue-veined arm in preparation for the injection. "Elizabeth's taken care of it."

None of them had had the heart to tell him: They had changed the codes for anything he may remotely have ever worked on, the afternoon of the day he'd been taken.

***

_"Weir. Elizabeth. She has, I don't know, a doctorate in political science -- if you can call that a science."_

Rodney had attempted glibness at first, defiant sarcasm.

The man could see right through him, though.

"You will tell me everything," he had said, and then he had slipped out a single knife, almost a nail file, from his uniform pocket -- and he had told Rodney why.

***

There's talk, Carson knows. Despite everything, Rodney had returned to them physically whole, and words fly around like poisonous bats: weak, disgraceful, _traitor_.

Rodney eats MREs in the lab, the only exception when someone brings him a tray from the mess hall.

Carson generally takes Wednesdays, his half-day off. He picks up his own dinner at eight. Sometimes he sits across from John Sheppard.

John had stumbled left and through the wormhole home, instead of right and towards Rodney, when the bullet hit. It had taken four weeks to regain full use of his arm. Even now, he keeps himself to a strict regimen, and at 0600, 1300, and 2000 every day, he drops down and cranks physical sustenance into his body.

He's been snapping invectives at Carson since Rodney got back, but lately he has stopped avoiding Carson's quiet gaze.

***

Rodney tells the man everything, just as he'd said. Rodney never learns so much as his name in return.

The man tells Rodney plenty else to make up for it.

Sometimes Rodney has only to be reminded of the beginning of one -- _"it takes two full hours for them to eat all the way through, you know, and you can see, you can feel your flesh bubble away layer by layer, like tiny sharp-toothed worms digging slowly into your nervous system before"_ \-- before Rodney would be blurting out whatever the man wanted, like a damned jukebox of choose-your-own-betrayals.

On the worst days, by the time they're done, neither Rodney nor the man's thick-soled boots have a single new mark on them.

***

They take him to his lab, at his own insistence. He drives himself for four days, overhauling parts of their defense systems and adding randomization routines to others.

When he's done, he asks for only projects concerning theoretical research. Zelenka nods and quietly signs all his requests.

***

For what it's worth, he had managed to convince the man that Atlantis and its gate to Earth no longer stood. He had screamed when they made him and sobbed shamed tears when they wanted that. But even as he had horribly betrayed his surrogate family who loved him, one by one, he had not betrayed the billions of people who didn't even know his name.

It's the only small comfort that he can cling to.

***

Dr. Heightmeyer says that Rodney has reached a point now where it would be good for him to go off-world once he asks for it. He hasn't yet, though. He stares in uncanny silence at the event horizon, like a moth at flame who knows that fire burns.

***

Rodney thinks incessantly about the makeshift knife secreted under his mattress, a piece of stray metal he had managed to loose from the bed and sharpened in secret. He turns the edge around and around in his mind, imagining sickly where he will cut, and having now several exact descriptions how it will feel. He has no illusions of using it as a weapon for gaining freedom.

The same day they use his bomb and his knowledge to liquidate SGA-7, the guards find the knife. They hold down his wailing body with their gun-oiled hands and they cut one long, slow, gash where he whimpers the loudest. They let him bleed enough that he knows it would have worked. Then they force him to beg for them to stop, over and over, until he falls unconscious.

***

_\--Carson!--_

Carson's rolled out of bed, pulling on his doctor's coat over his sleepwear, before he's even fully awake. "I'll be right there, John," he replies to the man's succinct report.

When he bursts into the room, Rodney is curled up in bed, shuddering.

John is half-crouched in the corner, a spilled cup at his feet and a depressed EpiPen still clenched in his hand. His eyes are on Rodney but he is making no move towards the terrified man. In the throes of a flashback, even the Colonel's touch is overshadowed by Rodney's perception of his job.

Rodney cries without meaning and reaches for the doctor, the healer, and Carson drops to his knees by his bedside, allowing him to cling to the sleeves of his doctor's frock and bury his face in his medicinal-smelling hands.

"I'm sorry..." Rodney whispers. "I forgot, again." Broken, pain-filled syllables in the dark. Rodney has begun apologizing for the attempts, instead of for the failures. It is progress of a sort.

***

The first day, before he'd understood anything, he had babbled imperiously to them about his many allergies and been pathetically surprised when they had eliminated all citrus from his meals. Of all the pieces of information he has told them, he regrets this one the most.

***

"Hush, now," Carson says, petting his hair as he finishes up. Rodney's vitals are good. John got to him in plenty of time.

John approaches, cautious. Carson says nothing when he skirts his own cot and slides into Rodney's bed to spoon up behind, one hand splayed out on the stabilizing chest.

"John--" Rodney stirs.

Carson strokes the restlessly eloquent hand, and he averts his eyes for John to press a private kiss to the back of Rodney's neck. He dredges up an ancient Gaelic lullaby from his great-grandmother's childhood, and he watches Rodney relax under the ancient rolling rhythms.

Shhh.....

  
END.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, you might try these:  
> [Dreams](http://archiveofourown.org/works/401534), by kuonji [Stargate Atlantis]  
> [Principal](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7426459), by kuonji [Stargate SG-1]  
> [Commutative Property](http://crimsonclad.livejournal.com/88071.html), by crimsonclad [Stargate Atlantis]


End file.
